The airship drifted westward, but not in a straight line.
It moved in lazy arcs, sometimes veering north, sometimes south, following invisible currents in the air that Lyra couldn't see but could feel in the way the platform beneath her feet shifted.
She gripped the railing, her knuckles white. Mild nausea kept circling back to find a spot to park somewhere inside of her.
Below them, the world was burning.
Not literally, kind of, not everywhere, mostly, but the evidence of war was unmistakable.
Smoke rose from distant cities in thick columns that stained the sky gray. Fields that should have been green were scorched black in patches. Roads were clogged with people, refugees, thousands of them, moving like ants across the landscape, heading east, away from the fighting.
Settlements that had stood for centuries were abandoned, some buildings intact, others reduced to rubble by mortars and grenades. The Tartarian structures that remained standing looked as perfect as the day they were built, but those that had been hit were simply... gone. Shattered stone, collapsed walls, the precision of their construction working against them, when they broke, they broke completely.
Lyra's chest tightened.
"How many cities have fallen?" she asked quietly.
Yosef stood beside her, his hands resting on the railing, his expression unreadable.
"Seven that I know of," he said. "Maybe more by now."
His voice was steady, but Lyra could hear the weight behind it.
This was his world. It was, being forcibly rewritten by a people who couldn't articulate what they wanted. Taking the ball and going home so nobody else could play a game they were not able to understand.
They flew in silence for a while. Lyra had grown to find great comfort in the hum that had been her companion the last few days. Yosef lived that hum. To him it was more like a beloved pet had passed or even a close friend or brother had gone missing with signs of foul play.
And then Lyra saw it.
A shape in the sky ahead of them, moving parallel to their path but higher, SO MUCH faster.
An airship.
But not like theirs.
This one was massive, easily ten times the size, and it churned out black smoke that trailed behind it like a scar across the sky. The smoke was thick, oily, nothing like the clean energy of Tartarian craft.
The design was crude, angular, nothing like the elegant curves of the ship they stood on.
And attached to the bottom was something that made Lyra's blood run cold.
A huge rounded box, maybe fifteen feet across, suspended by thick metal cables. From the bottom of the box protruded a short metal stick, maybe a foot or two long, with a small metal box at the very end.
Lyra stared at it, her stomach dropping.
"Yosef," she said, her voice tight. "That thing on the bottom, it looks like a nuclear weapon."
Yosef frowned. "A what?"
Lyra swallowed hard. "In my time, we have weapons that split tiny pieces of matter, atoms, and when they split, they release massive amounts of energy. One bomb can destroy an entire city. Flatten buildings for miles. Kill hundreds of thousands of people in seconds. The explosion creates a fireball hotter than the sun, and the radiation, the energy left behind, poisons the land for decades."
Yosef's jaw tightened. "And you think that's what they have?"
"I don't know," Lyra said. "But if it is..." She didn't finish the sentence.
The French airship continued on its path, oblivious to their presence, and slowly disappeared into the distance.
Lyra felt sick.
They flew for hours.
The airship continued its erratic path southwest, avoiding the city they'd come from, drifting where the air took it.
Yosef stood at the front of the platform, his eyes scanning the horizon, and then he knelt down.
"What are you doing?" Lyra asked.
"The rings," Yosef said, running his hand along the edge of one of the spinning metal rings beneath the platform. "They're not really in use, just spinning freely. But if I attach something to them..."
He pulled a length of bondage rope from the small supply pack Mira had given them and began tying it around one of the rings. Her humor often shows itself long after she sets the ball-gag in motion.
"If I can connect the rings to the platform," Yosef said, working quickly, "I can control the direction. Use them like a rudder."
Lyra watched as he secured the rope, then moved to the opposite side and did the same with another ring.
When he was finished, he stood and gripped both ropes, pulling gently on one.
The airship responded immediately, turning slightly to the left.
Yosef smiled, just barely. "That's better."
With the ropes attached, the flight became smoother, more intentional. Yosef guided them southwest, away from the worst of the fighting, toward the Mediterranean.
They crossed over what Lyra thought might be Greece.
The landscape below was a mix of green hills and ancient ruins, and for a moment, it almost looked peaceful.
They flew for hours more, crossing the Mediterranean, the water stretching endlessly beneath them.
And then Lyra saw land again, the coast of Africa.
"Yosef," she said, pointing.
He nodded. "Egypt."
The pyramids would be inland, to the south.
Yosef adjusted the ropes, steering them toward the coastline.
His eyes narrowed, looking up at the balloon.
"We have a problem," he said.
Lyra followed his gaze and saw it, a small tear in the fabric envelope. Air was escaping slowly, steadily.
The airship was descending.
Not fast, barely perceptible at first, but steady.
"There's a leak," Yosef said, his expression tight. "Small. Could have started hours ago. We just didn't notice until now."
"Can we fix it?" Lyra asked.
Yosef shook his head. "Not while we're flying. We'll have to ride it down."
Not fast, not a plummet, but steady, the loss of lift pulling them down.
Yosef gripped the ropes, trying to steer them toward open land, away from buildings, away from people.
"Hold on," he said.
Lyra grabbed the railing with both hands.
The ground rose up to meet them, faster now, and Lyra's stomach lurched.
And then they hit.
The platform struck the earth with a jolt that sent Lyra to her knees, but it wasn't violent. The rings beneath them absorbed most of the impact, and the airship settled into the dirt with a groan of metal and fabric.
For a moment, neither of them moved.
And then Yosef stood, offering Lyra his hand.
"Are you hurt?" he asked.
Lyra shook her head. "No. You?"
"I'm fine."
They climbed off the platform and looked around.
They'd landed in a stretch of flat, sandy terrain, dotted with scrub brush and rocks. In the distance, maybe five or ten miles to the south, Lyra could see them.
The pyramids.
Three massive triangular shapes rising from the desert, their sides gleaming faintly in the late afternoon sun.
Lyra's breath caught.
"There," she said, pointing.
Yosef followed her gaze, and his expression shifted, something between awe and determination.
"How are we going to get there without the ship?" Lyra asked him.
"We walk," he said.
The desert was hotter than Lyra had expected.
The sun beat down on them without mercy, and within an hour, her clothes were soaked with sweat. Her feet ached. Her throat was dry despite the water they'd brought.
But she didn't complain.
Yosef walked ahead of her, his pace steady, his eyes fixed on the pyramids in the distance.
They grew larger with every step, impossibly large, their scale becoming more apparent the closer they got.
By the time the sun began to set, they were standing at the base of the Giza plateau.
The three main pyramids loomed above them, massive beyond comprehension. The upper halves still gleamed with white limestone casing stones that caught the fading sunlight, and at their peaks, solid gold capstones glinted like flames. The lower portions had been stripped bare over the centuries, showing the rough stone blocks beneath, but the tops remained pristine, perfect, untouched.
Around them were smaller structures, temples, tombs, and other pyramids.
Lyra turned in a slow circle, taking it all in.
"Which one?" she asked.
Yosef was quiet for a moment, his gaze moving across the landscape.
"Not the big ones," he said finally. "I remember... when I was a child, there were stories. The teleporter wasn't in the great pyramids. It was in one of the smaller ones."
He pointed to the east, where three smaller pyramids stood in a row, their sides steep and precise.
"There," he said.
They walked toward them, and Yosef stopped in front of the middle one.
It was maybe a third the size of the largest pyramid, but it still towered above them, its stones fitted together with such precision that Lyra couldn't see the seams between the blocks.
"How do we get in?" Lyra asked. "Do you know which one it is?"
Yosef shook his head. "Only that it's one of the three smaller ones. We'll have to try them."
He approached the space between the first and second pyramids, positioning himself where he could see both structures.
He struck his Khatim against the metal strips on his belt, copper, silver, brass, bronze, gold, in order.
The ring chimed, but nothing happened.
No door opened on either pyramid.
The sun was setting now, the sky turning deep orange and purple.
Yosef moved to the space between the second and third pyramids.
He stopped, his hand resting on his belt.
"It doesn't make sense," he said, his voice calm. "The stories say the door is here. The frequencies should open it. But nothing responds."
He closed his eyes.
His breathing slowed, deepened. Finding his center, the still point inside himself where clarity lived.
And then—
A flash.
A memory from childhood. Lessons about the old ways, about alchemy, about what the metals represented.
His eyes opened.
The metal strips on his belt.
Five of them. Copper, silver, brass, bronze, gold.
He'd used them as a weapon before, but now he understood what they truly were.
Copper for space. Silver for spirit. Brass for purity. Bronze for reality. Gold for humanity itself.
Together, they were more than just metals.
They were a key.
All the frequencies together, space, spirit, purity, reality, humanity, would open the door.
And then—
A flash.
Brilliant, blinding white light on the horizon to the northeast.
Yosef's head snapped up.
A fireball rose into the sky, expanding, churning upward into a massive column. At its peak, the smoke spread outward, forming the unmistakable shape of a mushroom.
Lyra's blood went cold.
Another flash, further east.
Another mushroom cloud rising.
A third, closer to the first.
"That is exactly what happens when a nuke is dropped," Lyra said, her voice tight. "We have little time left, Yosef."
Yosef's jaw tightened.
He turned back to the pyramid wall.
Raised his left hand, the Khatim orbiting his finger catching the last rays of sunlight.
He struck the first metal strip.
Copper.
The ring chimed, and before the sound could fade, he struck again.
Silver.
The tones overlapped, building.
Brass, struck before silver finished.
Bronze, layering over brass.
Gold, the final strike.
And then—
Silence.
Complete, absolute silence.
Lyra looked at Yosef, confusion crossing her face.
Yosef stared at his hand, at the belt, at the pyramid wall.
What happened to the sound?
Three seconds passed.
And then the stone in front of them shifted.
A section of the pyramid wall, perfectly fitted, invisible until that moment, slid inward with a low grinding sound.
A doorway.
Dark. Narrow. Leading down into the earth.
Yosef looked at Lyra. "Are you ready?"
Lyra's heart pounded in her chest.
She nodded.
"Let's go."
They stepped through the doorway, and the moment they crossed the threshold, the stone behind them began to move.
Grinding. Sliding.
Sealing them in.
Lyra spun around, but it was too late.
The door was closed.
They were inside.
And then—
The world tilted.
Lyra felt it in her stomach first, a lurch, like the floor had dropped out from beneath her.
She reached for Yosef, but he was already reaching for her, and their hands found each other in the dark.
And then they were moving.
Not walking. Not falling.
Flying, kind of.
The sensation was impossible to describe, like being pulled in all directions at one time at impossible speed, like the entire universe was collapsing into a single point ahead of them and also expanding to infinity at the same time, they were being dragged along with it.
Light flared around them, not the warm glow of candles or the steady light of the sun, but something else. Geometric patterns, fractal shapes, colors that didn't exist, spiraling and folding into themselves. They could taste emotion, see sound, hear colors telling secrets that they already knew. Becoming perfect emptiness and God at the same time.
Lyra couldn't breathe.
Couldn't think.
Couldn't do anything but hold onto Yosef's hand and pray this would end.
Time stopped meaning anything.
Were they moving for seconds? Minutes? Hours?
She had no idea.
All she knew was the light, the speed, the overwhelming sensation of being torn apart and put back together over and over again, only it was not them. They had become creation and death in the same horrible way, it was beyond beautiful.
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